


The Counterfeit Earl of Trancy Manor

by ArkanianDelphiki



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Chronic Boredom, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Illness, Obsessive Behavior, Past Sexual Abuse, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 00:31:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15401001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArkanianDelphiki/pseuds/ArkanianDelphiki
Summary: “A blue rose... that was interesting. An artificial flower created by dying a common white rose a brilliant shade of blue. Back in his urchin days, Alois had meddled in that craft once or twice with varying degrees of success. To his delight, if he managed to sell the rose, it was often to the very aristocratic of whatever garden he had pinched the white rose from in the first place. People saw a certain charm to blue roses. Posers you might call them, pretending to be the impossible. Presenting themselves to be something so rare and beautiful that they couldn’t even begin to exist in the natural world.”Or: the flower language itself is accusing you of being a fucking fake.





	The Counterfeit Earl of Trancy Manor

Dreary, overcast days always bothered Alois. So dull. Not to mention their nasty habit of sending him either into fits of wild mania or deep depression. Today was one of the depression days. This time, Claude hadn’t even bothered to ask twice when Alois refused to get out of bed. All Alois felt capable of doing was watching the slightly differing pattern of shadows above his head from where he lay in the middle of his uncomfortably giant bed, arms by his side, staring straight ahead, listless and corpse-like.

“As you have no urgent matters today I shall leave you to your own devices,” Claude said, probably just looking for an excuse to go off and do… whatever is was that he did. Claude disappeared a lot but always seemed to be somewhere nearby. Back when the contract was still new, Alois used to summon him for no reason just to time how long it took the demon to appear. “Do call for me if you need assistance,” Claude continued, pouring a cup up tea as he spoke. “I have here a bit of breakfast for you on the stand, of course. You really ought to eat something, Your Highness. This isn’t healthy.”

Alois had almost replied with, _What difference does that make unless you eat my flesh as well as consume my soul?_ But Claude probably didn’t even feel the guilt or affection required to care about such a barbed comment. All he cared about was the boy’s soul, not the boy himself. And that was fine. Alois knew Claude only put up with someone as vulgar and ill-bred as himself for the promised meal. Alois wallowed away in such thoughts long after Claude retreated from the boy’s bedroom. His body felt too heavy to move, and so he lay motionless beneath the covers, as he had already been doing for hours now. However, the sweet aroma of hot tea and pastries soon became overpowering, even for him.

Ever since he had been provided free access to any food he desired, Alois had developed a bit of a nasty habit. He ate next to nothing for days on end, sometimes a week or more, starving himself until he began to pass out on the regular and his body shat water. Afterward, he would gorge himself, consuming whatever he wanted until the little voice in his head whispered that he was an ugly, unlovable, little glutton.

Alois suspected that the Demon Triplets insulted him behind his back, the way they widened their eyes at his serving portions (be they extremely large or exceedingly small) and then proceeded to engage in their confounded whispering. At least it was better than when they spoke aloud, the foul miscreants. Alois was terrified of people who spoke with such reservation and seemed content to merely observe. At least Claude _spoke_. True, the old demon spoke with discretion and never chattered, but he seemed to speak honestly about what he wanted from Alois. Certainly, that was _something_.

Meanwhile, Hannah, who cooked the food and looked at him with such pitiful eyes, spoke only when spoken too. She was a mystery that Alois had never bothered to unravel. Why was she even serving him? A debt to Claude? Alois didn’t care. She talked about him the worst, Alois was sure of it. Behind his back, of course. Hannah probably thought all sorts of ugly, ill-minded things about him. Worse, maybe she pitied him? When she cleaned up his plate and realized he had barely touched it...maybe she knew? Did she know when she ironed out his clothes, observing the scandalously short cut of his pants? Did she know how, when Alois looked in a mirror, his own eyes disgusted himself? That they appeared vile and dirty? Did she too see him, as Claude did, as some lesser, impure meal, only somewhat interesting enough to keep a demon’s attention?

As he gulped down a buttered croissant, Alois reached out for a cup of tea to wash it all down. What he found was a chipped, common looking, off-white teacup with a thin gold rim which did not belong to any China set that had ever graced the Trancy cupboards. Why, the cup did not even match the elegant, blue-and-gold teapot beside it. A spare, perhaps? Could all the others be dirty? Alois couldn’t imagine why, since chores were accomplished rather quickly in the Trancy manor. Maybe everyone had been slacking. Who knew what demons got up to in their spare time? Wild orgies?

 _I’d just as soon not know_ , Alois decided.

He should talk to Claude about this. Reprimand the servants. Punish somebody. It was a nice enough idea to get him out of bed, but not interesting enough to get him dressed or presentable.

_Damn them, I don’t care. I’m no master to them anyway, not really. Who cares if I walk about in my nightgown? Who would even care if I streaked through the mansion naked? Claude wouldn’t even bother with me, the Triplets would whisper. Hannah, that bitch, would look at me with those blank, sad eyes._

Only Hannah would try to dress him. She never learned, that woman. Alois always managed to find time to hurt or humiliate her and yet she just kept coming back for more, the ignoramus. Maybe she enjoyed it. He couldn’t tell. Hannah’s eyes always stayed glued to the floor, rarely looking at Alois. Perhaps she thought him too disgusting to look at? Maybe the very sight of him hurt her eyes. Well then, maybe he should poke them out. Alois imagined watching as the blood ran down her dark cheeks and her lavender-lipped mouth trembled. She probably wouldn’t even scream, the bloody she-demon. Alois filed that fantasy away for later. Hannah only had two eyes after all, so he could only enjoy the moment twice. Best to reserve that particular torture for some later date.

Alois was halfway down the second flight of stairs before he’d already lost interest in his original task. He considered tossing the teacup off the balcony and watching as it shattered, but there was still a decent amount of tea left that he wanted to enjoy. Now he wished he’d snagged a few pastries on his way down, but he did not want to trudge all the way back to his room for that. _Might as well raid the kitchen_ , he decided. Maybe Hannah was there. He could burn her with whatever remained of his tea. Although perhaps not; the tea would probably be cooled off by the time he made it to the kitchen. Maybe the kitchen was too far away for cheap thrills and a few sweets.

 _I’m bloated like a whale anyway_ , Alois reminded himself, _bloated like a bloody walrus. Ugly little guttersnipe. I can’t believe anyone thought you were actually nobility. Even the old man thought you were disgusting trash when he saw you and he was hideous._

Alois’s fingers clutched the frail teacup handle as the other hand violently clutched the railing. _Please go away_ , he thought desperately. _I don’t want to think about this._

He’d...just been standing here. In the stairwell. Again. He did this sometimes. Forgot what he was doing. Got so caught up battling with his own vicious, nasty thoughts. Or sometimes nothing at all, like a void within his own mind. Which stairway was this? How long had he been here? Alois shivered, his skin covered in goosebumps, but finding no relief from the chilly morning air. Cold seeped up from the floorboards, and he immediately wished he had grabbed slippers before setting off on this ill-conceived, rapidly changing quest. Only the hot tea offered any respite from the cold. As Alois descended the remaining stairs, he nestled the cup near his collarbone, clasping the sides in both hands, letting the warmth spread as far as it could.

Somehow, Alois ended up in the parlor near the windows, curled up in a giant high backed chair lined in deep burgundy velvet. As he sat there, alone and shivering in the dimly lit parlor, his eyes were drawn to the only source of light in the vicinity, pouring generously through the tall windows, some number of feet ahead. Alois stared through the panes towards the sky above, expression almost contemplative. Alois assumed the sun was somewhere above the overbearing clouds, but the warm golden glow had become quite pale when filtered through such an overabundance of billowing white and silver clouds.

It is was such a cold, lifeless kind of light, reflecting eerily off of the boy’s nightgown and the milk-white teacup he still clutched tightly within in his small hands. Such a dead kind of light, quite like the moon in some respects. Perhaps the moon was a dead sun. Alois didn’t know. He had never gone to school or received any type of proper education. Claude gave up trying to teach him past basic English literacy and arithmetic skills. Only the dancing lesson section of aristocratic education seemed to interest the young earl… that and the extensive library of poetry he often forced Claude to read aloud to him.

Alois stared down at his teacup, noticing how it reflected the pale light unevenly upon the tea’s surface due to a chip along the rim. The sight jogged his memory a bit. Now that he was thinking about it, Alois did seem to remember once hearing that the moon’s light was not its own and only reflected the greater light of the sun. Perhaps the moon was too weak to create light. Or perhaps it really was dead.

 _You are a cheap, chipped, little moon-cup_ , he mused, _examining the teacup from every availed angle. Too thin and fragile to hand off to the lower class and too plain and broken to be useful to nobility. Don’t look the part, don’t act the part. You are but a container meant to be used, but who would even want to use you? You’re not good for much of anything, are you?_

“I suppose you do hold tea well enough,” Alois countered himself aloud. The teacup had no response, of course, and Alois began to feel that dreaded sense of boredom overtaking him once again. He had had quite enough of speaking with utensils and proceeded to down the remaining tea. Now to dispose of the cheap little cup. _Probably should throw it at Hannah. I’ll have to go search for her to do that but it’s far more interesting than just breaking it in any old place._

Alois jumped from the chair with renewed vigor, never too bored to heap abuses on his demon maid. As he lowered the cup down, however, Alois noticed a detail previously hidden by the tea. Deep inside the cup, at the very bottom, lay an illustration of a brilliant blue rose in full bloom, accompanied on either side by a leaf. Alois peered into the cup a moment, to assess the somewhat shoddy picture. It was factory-made, one of thousands, a bit out of focus, and it was clear that the artist of the original illustration had messed up the leaves to the point that they almost resembled bay leaves more than the sharp-edged leaves of a rose bush. _Not much of a botanist_ or _a painter, I dare say_ , Alois decided as he sprinted down the dark and narrow halls.

A blue rose though. That was interesting. An artificial flower created by dying a common white rose a brilliant shade of blue. Back in his urchin days, Alois had meddled in that craft once or twice with varying degrees of success. To his delight, if he managed to sell the rose, it was often to the very aristocratic of whatever garden he had pinched the white rose from in the first place. But people saw a certain charm to blue roses. Posers you might call them, pretending to be the impossible. Presenting themselves to be something so rare and beautiful that they couldn’t even begin to exist in the natural world.

The boy sighed. He supposed it only helped to reinforce his metaphor. If that was how metaphors worked. Simile maybe. Maybe neither. Alois didn’t know. He still spelled Wednesday “Wenzday” and knew about a quarter of his Times Tables, if that. _I’m only pretended at being an earl_ , Alois thought darkly, rounding the bend almost too quickly and nearly tripping over himself. _Claude does the heavy lifting._

It was the same way he felt when he saw himself in a mirror. That he only pretended to be beautiful and attractive, dressing up in stately or even suggestive clothes, wearing a bit up makeup, tending to his hair, or perfuming his body. All as he had done to trick the old man into wanting him. The Triplets could gossip about it as much as they wanted. They probably thought him a skank. Claude wouldn’t say a word of reprimand. And Hannah… she would only continue to pity him with those sorrowful, downcast, complacent eyes. The mental image sickened him.

“Hannah!” He shouted, barging into the kitchen, where, sure enough, the demoness was cutting vegetables and preparing some meal or another.

“Master?” She replied, stilling her blade, glancing almost directly at him for a brief moment.

 _Fuck it_. Alois threw the teacup at her with as much force as he could, hitting her below target in the neck. The china shattered upon hitting the ground. Hannah clutched her already bruising throat, holding back tears of shock. “Forgive me, master,” she managed, lucky a shard of teacup hadn’t lodged itself right into her throat. Pathetic.

“Why was I served tea in such a plain cup, Hannah?” Alois demanded, grabbing her braid tightly. “What’s the meaning of this? Have you been slacking off, you pitiful excuse for a maid?”

He yanked her hair violently backward until she was little more than a heap on the floor. “Never let me see this kind of shit again, demon.” He warned, stepping on her hand on the way out, pausing briefly to grind it into the floor just for good measure. He didn’t have on shoes to make it truly painful, but it couldn’t have been pleasant either. “Now clean it up,” he ordered, violently slamming the door behind him.

He laughed aloud to himself as he skipped away from the scene, a sound he had often heard described as joyless or unhinged, but he didn't care. He was happily riding out the emotional high afforded to him by such a power trip.

Boredom, however, can only be staved off for so long.

_Now what..._

**Author's Note:**

> (Honestly, I don't know why Alois didn't kill himself out of sheer boredom before the second season even began.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! (Title likely subject to change in the near future.)


End file.
